This time the Burmese government has managed to justify its offence against the Rohingyas by blaming the members of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a Rohingya insurgent group claimed by the Myanmar security forces who they allege of carrying an attack on Myanmar border forces and killing 12 of its members. What followed the alleged attack was all tragic, the Burmese army wreaked mayhem on the Rohingyas and resorted to torture and brutality which is yet to be assessed by an independent human rights group, and which still goes on.
It is for the fifth time that the burmese authority is trying to persecute the Rohingyas by means of a ‘savage pogrom’, which the UNHRC refers to as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Fifty years ago in 1962 after the state became independent from the British rule, Myanmar came under the rule of military dictatorship which promoted ferocious nationalism under the Buddhist identity and during this campaign Rohingya were singled out as a threat to state of Myanmar. The campaign was mostly based on the concept of ‘common enemy’ which was used to unite the Buddhists and above all survive the dictatorship. What formed the strong basis of this ‘perceived threat’ is traced all the way back to the period of 2nd world war when British ruled Burma. At that time japan had sent its army to invade Burma and each group that is Burmese Buddhists and Rohingyas supported the opposing side, the Rohingya had sided with the British colonialists while as the Buddhists sided with the Japanese invaders.
The persecution of Rohingyas started in 1978 under ‘Operation Burma King’ which forced about two hundred thousand Rohingyas to flee the country. In 1982 Burmese government passed the citizenship act and registered 1035 ethnic groups in it but the one million Rohingya population was not on the list of recognized ethnic groups which made them stateless people.
Another offensive campaign against the Rohingya started in 1991 which was called ‘Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation’ and during this campaign about two hundred and fifty thousand people were forced to flee the country. What these campaigns of persecution suggest is that Burmese Buddhist government has never feared international backlash when it was engaged in carrying an overt hostility against the Rohingyas.
A semi-permanent response to the Rohingya crisis would constitute calling forth global solidarity and opening of humanitarian corridors by other nations for aid and rehabilitation which will then pave way for conflict resolution processes also.
The violence against the rohingyas continued till 2012 and in the same year four Rohingya members were accused of raping and killing a Buddhist women in Rakhine. The Buddhist nationalists backed by security forces attacked the Muslim population by burning their houses and displacing tens of thousands of Rohingyas.
It was only after the silent genocide of Rohingyas entered into 50th year, a number of human rights watch groups raised concerns about the Rohingyas in the Rakhine state of Myanmar and termed the Buddhist offense against the Rohingyas as ethnic cleansing but by this time it was too late to do so because the Rohingyas had already became stateless and half of the Rohingya population had already fled to the neighboring Bangladesh and this revelation was made by the Burmese defacto leader Aung Sun Su Kyi in one of her speech few years back.
The ‘generational problem’ of Rohingyas this year again caught the international headlines when Rohingyas were being seen brutally killed, tortured and their mutilated and burnt bodies lying outside the burnt houses in the videos that surfaced on the social media. The Rohingya crisis has so far been responded with the ‘hot potato’ approach towards conflict resolution that is to say that there is the escalation of hostilities against the Rohingyas, the issue will also stay in the spotlight and once the de-escalation of hostilities will start, the grave issue will also become insignificant for the international community.
Under the humanitarian international law, humanitarian crisis as that of Rohingyas can facilitate and justify foreign intervention of international coalition but the international community’s response towards the plights of Rohingyas has been all talk and no action. Despite of having strong evidence of an ‘ethnic cleansing’, a term which has been reserved for describing some of the worst atrocities in world history and the fact that Rohingyas said to be having surpassed the Syrian war refugee tide, the international community has not been even able to enter Myanmar for a mere investigation let alone expecting a military intervention from them.
While the global powers remain busy in establishing democracies in once dictatorial controlled middle eastern states which they had percieved as threat to the world peace, at the same time a dictatorship under the guise of democracy has been let loose by the same powers to carry mass murders, rapes and persecution.
Seemingly, the international community is awaiting to find a solution for the Rohingyas in the form of their settlement in the Bangladesh, which can be established by Myanmar Government’s assertion that it will repatriate only those who will be able to prove their identity with the correct documentation. It clearly reveals that the plan of Myanmar government was to cut the number of Rohingyas living in the Rakhine state and make few of them live there.
Bangladesh has been doing a commendable job by allowing thousands of refugees to enter their territory every day and doing whatever they afford to do for them. They will be able to help the Rohingyas for now but it will not be forever. A semi-permanent response to the Rohingya crisis would constitute calling forth global solidarity and opening of humanitarian corridors by other nations for aid and rehabilitation which will then pave way for conflict resolution processes also.
(The author is a student of International Relations -Peace and Conflict Studies at Islamic University of Sciences & Technology Awantipora . The views of the author are his personal)
